For the young ones out there I can’t begin to explain the significance of this event, I’m not a poet or writer, I just don’t have the words. But here goes.
The bringing down of the wall was really when I began to see a future. Up to that point I would have considered myself lucky to be alive by the year 2000. Nuclear Armageddon was really the future I saw. A snap survey of a high school class I was in the late 70’s had over 70% of the class thinking it was likely we wouldn’t make it to 2000. And the change, the hope, didn’t come from conquest or defeat, but from humanity. There was a window and politicians stepped back or were just confused and the common folk just stepped in an reached out a hand like the guy on the left (I really hope that one of the guys on the right took his hand). And that’s all it took to end one of the biggest face downs of all time.
Facts: at that point in time the Soviets had enough nuclear weapons to vaporize the top six inches of the USA. The USA could in return vaporize the top 4 inches of the USSR. I lived in Canada, we would have got the fall out from both.
We got through that lot, you lot are going to have to get through the global warming thing. Very sorry about that but we didn’t realise what we were doing, our focus was else where.
